A few days ago, I shared my experience changing the camshaft seal to fix an oil leak. Because of this repair, a problem came up that taught me something more about my car. It was something I had heard about and knew I needed to be careful with, but I understood it better after dealing with the issue we had during the repair.
It turns out that to fix any type of oil leak, whether it’s from seals or gaskets, you need to remove the timing belt. When you do that, you have to take steps to preserve the timing. One of those is using the famous flat bar that rests on the cylinder head and has two tabs that fit into the back of the camshafts, secured with locking pliers, just like you see in the photo below.
Then it is necessary to wedge the crankshaft as shown in the next photo, but before that, you have to turn it to the 3 o'clock position. There is a mark on the sprocket to help you get it into that position.
We followed this whole process to the letter, but there was one thing we didn't do: loosen the camshaft sprockets so they would remain free, ensuring their position wouldn't be compromised when tightening the timing belt with the tensioner. By not doing that, when we released the locks on the crankshaft and camshafts, the timing moved a bit due to the belt tension.
This meant having to take the car apart again, removing the intake manifold that sits over the valve cover, the alternator belts, and the power steering pump, just to get the timing belt cover off so we could turn the crankshaft again and get it into position—but this time, loosening the camshaft sprockets.
Despite how hard it is to disassemble and reassemble everything twice, it was rewarding to learn this step. It is one I overlooked in the past, and it would have made setting the timing much easier on previous occasions. Before, I used to put locking pliers on the cam sprockets so they wouldn't move, but that won't be necessary anymore.
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